I have been reading more and more I have been wanting to highlight and make notes in the books and I want to retain those notes in some sort of database so that when I am thinking about something such as the future of water usage in the United States I can call up all those notes and write a really great blog post about how we need to start applying desalinization technology to how we handle our waste water. Or something like that. I am really looking forward to the day when I can have something that does that. I don’t even have to keep the book. I would happily borrow the e-book from the New York Public e-Library and have it zapped back there when it was due so long as my notes and quotations were left intact. It’s not even a big thing to ask, but it would be so satisfying. Just imagine how much easier writing a thesis could be. You could even take all the books home with you over winter break without breaking your back or paying a king’s ransom in baggage charges.

While we’re on the subject of school there’s this: Digital Textbooks. Colleges already order, or rather make students order, custom textbook for a number of classes. With a custom digital text book, profs can order the texts they want and if they want to add a topic mid semester they could (eventually). It also will lessens the ridiculous lag between something becoming important to the field and it being put into textbooks. Why stop at the college level with adaptable books? Soon the issue of right-wingers in Texas changing what is in textbooks nation wide will be a thing of the past. If a teacher wants to teach about Oscar Romero he’ll be in there. Fantastic. Of course, such customizable books do kill the possibility of buying a cheap used book with good highlighting and margin notes and without the ability to buy used books at all college reading lists will become even more expensive. Well. you can’t have everything, but at least you’ll have Oscar Romero.

If you are in the mood for something even older than your Bio 101 book there is this: digital copies of rare books. The British Library has digitized many of its 19th century books, including Hardy, Dickens, and Austin. Want to read Pride and Prejudice in it’s original layout and typeface? Done. Even when the hard copies have deteriorated into dust you’ll be able to read it.

So, iPad, Kindle, nook, and others. Hurry up and meet my needs. I have things I want to read with you.

P.S. E-books helping sure in library members.

This January the board of  LA MoCA named him their new director. This is a big deal. First of all, because it has always been understood that museums are run by the academics and galleries by the money men, and not the other way around. But LA MoCA has changed the game by promoting one of the biggest money men there is to the head of their museum, in fact this is the first time that something like this has ever been done. Now, this may be seen as a turn for the worst in the museum world. With business tie-ins, dumbing down, and selling out all for the sake of big name glitz and global connections. And it may yet turn out that way.

But LA MoCA is in a hell of a position. They have been mismanaged and underfunded and almost went under in 2008. They were only saved by a $30 million dollar bailout by their key patron Eli Broad. They need to rethink the way they do business, and quick. Enter Jeffery Deitch, who seems to have everything that they are looking for, taste, organization, and the ability to make a business run. But does he have vision? He has put on some great shows at Deitch Projects and he tends to favor the younger crowd, which could be fresh air for museum programing, but  he has no academic background. Is he going to be able to keep that end of museum life up, or is this truly a new day for what makes a museum show in LA? He has the business cred, and a Harvard MBA, his gallery shows always keep it fresh, but where are his roots? We’ll have to wait and see.

What’s in it for Deitch? This is what I find myself wondering. Has the economic downturn hit him so hard that he is giving up Deitch Projects for the steady, but smaller, income of a museum gig? Maybe, it’s gotten hard for lots of galleries; but I doubt it’s gotten that hard for him. Maybe he just want s to switch it up, swim with some new sharks. Whatever his reasoning, it comes at a high cost: Deitch Projects must close by June 1. All the staff has been let go and the artists have been informed to seek new east coast representation. That sounds cold, but Deitch has stated that he is dedicated to all of his staff and artists and will do what he can to make sure everyone finds a soft landing. Whatever that may mean. It remains to be seen how the staffers will fair; while working for Deitch would usually be a resume bump his recent career change has not been well received and might give those now looking for work a somewhat toxic aura. The future may be better for artists. Some big names have been freed, Ryan McGinness, Barry McGee, and Shepard Fairey for example, but what of the smaller names? I know some gallerists who spent the afternoon looking at catalogs the newly made free agents so I’m optimistic that most will land on their feet.

This all seems to be on the up and up, but what happens in two to five years when Deitch leaves museum life and goes back to the galleries? Will he benefit from the sales of artists who he himself raised to prominence? It’s no big deal for gallerists to make money off of those they made famous, that’s the rules of the game, but making profits from the work of a non-profit is very dirty. You don’t do that. So what is the plan for the long term conflict of interest? Deitch never goes back to galleries? He abandons artists he has previously supported? He changes carers again and becomes a prima ballerina for the Moscow State Ballet? As with all of this, the only answer seems to be for us to wait and see.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Wild Sheep Chase is the fourth Murakami novel that I have read and the earliest. It is also the first of Murakami’s novels to have received wide international acclaim. The novel is broken up into multiple parts, eight in all, but really there are only two main parts, the observational character development describing the narrator’s relationships with his wife and then his new girlfriend and the sheep chasing adventure. I found it weak story telling that the slow clear description from the first bit of the book did not reoccur as the narration unfolded. Murakami must have too, in his later books he overlaps the two styles with much greater success.

Not to belittle the sheep chase. It is a good adventure, an average man tasked to find a mysterious mythological sheep that can enter one’s consciousness and give one the will to build empires. With nothing to go on but a picture. And if he does not find it, dire consequences. Very fun. Though, throughout the story I often found myself wondering. Why a sheep? Really, why does this power demon take the form of/is described as a sheep? It seems to be an important point that our narrator is a very average man, it’s repeated several times, and the sheep seems to me to be the very most average of animals. Sheep in of themselves have not real stand out qualities, save their ability to create wool. The sheep could be seen as symbolic of the human condition. But then why the demon sheep if there is no analogous demon person? I feel like I am missing half of the symmetry.

Regardless, I did enjoy the book. Murakami’s matter of fact metaphysical realism always leaves me wanting more as does the fact that I feel as if I am always missing the last piece of the puzzle. If only I could stay with it a little longer, it all would become clear. But it never does.

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Needless to say, I like this work. He even paints on board, my kind of guy. His somewhat naive style belies the ironic and partisan content of his paintings, for instance in U.S. World Studies III (above) Balincourt charts corporate donations to the Republican party state by state.

I also really enjoy the occasional tendency towards sign painting and the fact that Balincourt does not shy away from text in his work.

I think that’s important that Balincourt vacillates between direct and subjective work (as much as any work can be direct or subjective). One without the other is a cursory and uninteresting examination of the social issues at hand.

Balincourt also founded Starr Space (formally Starr Street Projects) a community space used for concerts, yoga, art events, and quinceanera celebrations.

http://starrspace.net

http://www.zachfeuer.com/julesdebalincourt.html

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My father got me this book; he was really enjoying it and wanted to know what I thought. After reading it I see that he didn’t really want someone to talk with, he wanted someone to gossip with. Now it’s true, once I started it I couldn’t put it down. That’s because it’s like The West Wing, but real life. Well, and in a book. The rubber-necker in me really wanted to know how Hillary took to Obama’s absurdly quick rise to national prominence and, most of all, exactly what thought process lead to Sarah Palin as the VP nominee. And, as well as it can, this book delivers. Most of the quote are unattributed and the sources are unnamed, but he fact that this book has gotten as much publicity as it has without anyone raising their hackles at it leads me to believe that the reporting is right on. And what reporting it must have taken to piece together all the information it took to make this book. The authors conducted over 200 interviews.

The news cycle being what it is, all of the events in this book seem like they are in the distant past. While reading it, I was constantly being struck by just how amazing the last presidential race was. The knock down drag out Democratic nomination. McCain’s amazing comeback. The release of Sarah Palin . The economic meltdown. Let alone the fact that however you cut it, this was a race of epically historic proportions. I was constantly amazed that I lived through this.

In the end nobody comes out of this looking good. The entitlement assumed by the Clintons is staggering. Hillary was putting together a transition team, in charge of moving her and her staff into the White House, before she had even secured the nomination. McCain’s selection of Palin is almost painful to read about. She was selected to be a media ‘wow’ moment, and her debut at the RNC was all that and more, but when it became clear that she was not ready for a national campaign and had no idea what she was getting into when she said yes she was abandoned by the main campaign. And then there is the crazy story of the downfall of John Edwards. whew.

Although it comes in at just over 430 pages this book felt like a surface level read. It spends most of its time on the Democratic nomination fight. The pages dedicated to the Republican nomination seem cursory at best. I was left wanting so much more. It just scrapes the surface of almost every topic it touches. There should be dissertations written about Obama’s fundraising machine and McCain’s campaign belly-flop. There probably will be and I look forward to reading those too.

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Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the best books about the Civil War, or the War Between the States if we northerners are being polite, that I’ve ever read. But really, that’s because it’s not about the Civil War at all. Instead, Tony Horwitz studies the footprint left by the Civil War and how we are still facing most, if not all, of the important issues of the war. This book is not an academic study, it is more of a travel story: one man’s journey into history, beginning with his childhood fascination with the war and ending with, well, more experience but very few conclusions. But I’m okay with that, because these issues, race, heritage, and the interpretation and misinterpretation of history are not the kind of things that we never really do reach conclusions on, ever. I found this book is a satisfying read anyway, because it illuminated many points of view that I had no real understanding of before.

Raised and educated in the north I never really understood the glory of the romantic south. I remember watching Gone with the Wind with my father. He would grow soft and sigh and Scarlett’s fortitude. I turned to him and asked

“Why do people like this movie?”

“Because it reminds them of a lost time, of something they can never really get back.”

“But they were wrong, and they lost.”

The conversation died there. I clearly didn’t get it and my father did not want to push the point with his ten year old. That I was sitting through a cinematic epic that did not contain spaceships was enough of a victory. I high school we were taught about how the Confederate states were well within their right to secede, but we didn’t dwell on it. The AP was in May and we had a lot of ground to cover. I get it now Scarlett. You were one classy lady. I understand why some people want to fly the Confederate flag over state houses and why some people weep at the sight of it. This is a story told in the only way it can be told, shades of Confederate gray.

Every chapter and story is interesting and worth reading. I felt that the amount of time spent with the hardcore re-enactors lagged a bit, but it definitely wasn’t bad or boring. It just seemed like these guys were deluding themselves, searching for their “period rush”, while so many other things were going on around them in the contemporary world. Undoubtably that was one of the points.

I know that the attitudes and personalities recored here do not form a majority in the south today (especially that of arch hardcore re-enactor Robert Lee Hodges); but it does seem like they permeate southern culture. I wonder how how many of these attitudes have changed in the ten plus years since this book was published. I imagine not much.

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This piece of cloth is the only one of its kind in the world. It is woven from the silk collected from one million golden orb spiders on the island of Madagascar. That’s right. Spider silk. The project was begun by Simon Peers after he read about a device Jacob Paul Camboué invented in the nineteenth century for milking spiders. Now, what I wonder is why Camboué felt that spider silk was the way to go in textile creation. He created a set of bed hanging shown at the Paris Exposition in 1898. I remain unsure that the immense effort it took to collect the silk justified the 19th century demand but there you go. Simon Peters and his associate Nicholas Godley created this cloth with dozens of spider handlers as well as volunteers who would collect wild spiders to be milked (the spiders were returned unharmed to the wild after their silk was stolen). While Camboué went into full textile production Peers and Godley created this cloth mostly to prove it cold be done.

Spider silk is an amazing substance that is very hard to create artificially. The silk is produced as a protein liquid that is extruded into a solid by the spider. Which is totally awesome. The silk has a strength similar to steel or kevlar. Which means that this tablecloth is bulletproof. Imagine the golden super suit you could make out of this stuff. (However, the force of the bullet would still deal a deadly impact. All your bits would be in the same place though.) Scientists have been trying to make spider silk artificially for some time now, but inserting the silk making genes into bacteria and cows and goats. But it hasn’t really worked out as of yet. Large scale spider farming is also something of a pipe dream. Unlike silkworms spiders have a tendency to eat each other when they are kept in close captivity. I hope science gets it together though. I want the soldiers and tanks of the future to be outfitted with golden spider armor. Just think of how fantastic they would look.

Now we know what Spiderman will be doing in his old age. Knitting spider armor from his web sacs (if you are in the ‘he produces his own web school’ that is). He could make all kinds of money supplying armor to super secret special ops teams. Even if he doesn’t produce his own, he would be rolling in it if he started producing web commercially.

Perfume is the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man born without a scent but with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. It’s a murder story, but it is not all about the murder, victims, or evidence. There is no brilliant or cunning detective here. It is a period piece, set in the eighteenth century, yet does not feel overly historical. It’s a magic realism examination of the overlooked world of scent.

The main character, Grenouille, is not sympathetic. He is as cold hearted as he is talented. His motives are simple, create the the most appealing scent so that he can be loved by all. I found myself uninterested in the characters and most of the plot, I found that it drags in the first half f the book, yet drawn in by the vivid description of the smells, the people and, later, unlikely circumstances of the novel. It was similar to my experience reading Candide in high school, but without the complex social satire.

Though a very enjoyable and interesting read, in the end it came to more of a ‘hu’ than a ‘wow’.

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I love the tribal costumes:

Now, I really wonder what circumstances these were acquired under. Some parts of the museum really has that feeling of colonial chauvinism and cultural theft. I have no real evidence that it’s true and I do really enjoy looking at all these get ups. They make me smile every time and feel a little afraid.

I love the Earth room:

When you get right down to it, I love the Earth. This is an amazing planet. Did you know that 25-30% of the heat in the core of the Earth is residual energy left over from the creation of the planet. Yeah. That’s awesome. They also have an ice core sample and a sand table that shows exactly how the Earth’s crust folds up when one tectonic plate moves under another in a subduction zone. Which is how we end up with all those wavy strata lines.

Do you see this biodiversity room:

It is intense.

The giant whale:

This is one of the best rooms. Hands down. Now, the eerie blue light adds to the appeal, but seeing that huge whale after going through the biodiversity room really offers a staggering perspective on just how insignificant human beings are. Seriously. It also makes staring at artificial fish very interesting. Mesmerizing even.

The shiny:

I have a hard time even imagining that stuff like this occurs naturally. It’s like magic to me. I just have to take it on faith that the geologists are right on this one, because it’s not like we can sit down ad watch it happen. Wondrous.

The prehistoric animals:

Hahaha, look at that guy. He’s older than the Himalayas.

Now, of all these are awesome. But strangely, they are not my favorite things in the museum. Not by far. Rather ironically, my favorite things at the American Museum of Natural history are some of the oldest seemingly outdated displays in the whole building.

The models and dioramas. Somehow, nothing does as good a job holding my interest and explaining a historical situation as a good old fashioned diorama.

You need to know what Ur might have looked like back in the day? Bam. done. Why do these little tableaus have more didactic staying power than digital displays?

Well, I think that the fact that most of these are bird’s eye perspective is fantastic for taking in the whole picture.

Also, the fact that this display system seems like something of a throwback, whether or not they are actually old) makes these somewhat nostalgic. (Also, isn’t that little guy on the magic carpet fantastic? He’s not just painted on the background, he’s suspended in the air.)

And they’re just more real. I empathize with these hypothetical historic people way more than if they were CG creatures. I mean, they’re living in a house made of bones.

What’s not to love?